John Diamond dies

Columnist and broadcaster John Diamond, whose compelling accounts of life with cancer drew a large and sympathetic following, has died.

Mr Diamond, 47, died at Royal Marsden Hospital, said Peter Stothard, editor of The Times newspaper.

He won critical acclaim for his entertaining contributions to the public understanding of the disease.

"He shed unique light on a dark disease. That light will be John Diamond's greatest legacy." Mr Stothard said.

Diamond was diagnosed with throat cancer in 1997, and his weekly lifestyle column for the Times became an intimate diary blending everyday experiences with thoughts on radiotherapy, surgery and mortality.

In his column last weekend, Mr Diamond joked about a new round of chemotherapy: "Strangely, I don't much mind about losing the hair on my head for a while, but I'm annoyed that I'll be bald-chested."

He found writing therapeutic.

"It certainly helps me deal with what's happening ... It's as valid and useful for me to do this as it would be to go into complete denial or to spend my days at some centre for positive thinking," he wrote one week.

Other cancer patients, or their friends and relatives, felt the same, finding solace in his work. No longer able to taste food, he would lock himself in his bedroom while his wife, Nigella Lawson, presented a cookery show downstairs.

The former broadcaster lost his voice after an operation to remove most of his tongue, and he wrote about hearing his old voice on a repeat broadcast.

"He was the one who didn't realize what a boon an unimpaired voice was, who ate his food without stopping to think about its remarkable flavour, who was criminally profligate with words, who took his wife and children and friends for granted - in short, who didn't know he was living," Mr Diamond wrote.

As well as his weekly column, he wrote a book, "C: Because Cowards Get Cancer Too," and a play. He was tracked by television crews for more than a year for a documentary, culminating in a poignant embrace with his wife as he was wheeled in for life-threatening surgery.

"Stories like his, available to all every week in the papers, have helped bring cancer out of the closet in Britain," said Kate Law, a spokeswoman for the Cancer Research Campaign.

"By describing his life - for example how he continued to attend dinner parties even though he could no longer swallow - he helped show others that they too must try and continue life as normally as possible," Law said.

Dying from cancer, he said, had ironically become his living.

Nevertheless, some readers accused Diamond of morbid sensationalism, and there was abuse among thousands of letters and e-mails he received each week.

A stranger once saw him drowning his sorrows in a bar and berated him for not taking better care of himself and for ignoring his readers' feelings. Another reader accused him of cowardice and "not wanting to get better; a week after he'd described the joy of lighting his cigarettes.

"There you were, cheering me onto the line," he wrote the following week. "And in gratitude all I could do was cock a smoky snook at your encouragement ...Thanks for the thought. But you're wrong. I - or my body, at least, have called tobacco's bluff by being beyond its threat."

Mr Diamond is survived by his wife and two children. Funeral arrangements were not immediately announced.